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Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
BOSTON -- Lesion darkness would make a better criterion for identifying early melanomas than the 6-mm diameter cutoff in the ABCDE criteria currently used by dermatologists and patients, according to Dr. Stuart Goldsmith.
"It's recognized that all melanomas start as a single cell or a few cells. So microscopically, they're already cancer, but we're not even telling patients to look for small lesions," he said.
"If we were doing okay [in terms of mortality], then it wouldn't matter. The fact is that we are not doing as well as we want to for our patients," said Dr. Goldsmith, a dermatologist in Albany, Ga. "More than 8,000 Americans die every year of melanoma--most from cutaneous lesions, lesions on the skin that could have been removed when smaller than 6 mm and in time to save the patient's life."
"Dermatology is simply not on the same page as other specialties in terms of cancer surveillance by the very existence of the diameter criterion," he said. Even though most other specialties have had more success than dermatology in decreasing cancer mortality rates,...
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